Friday, January 25, 2008

NEW YORK - A former Assent LLC employee pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy in an insider-trading case revolving around illicit profiting off information about upgrades or downgrades by UBS AG analysts.

Laurence McKeever admitted to agreeing in August 2006 with another Assent employee _ Samuel W. Childs Jr. _ to conceal what appeared to insider trading by customers.

"We agreed to remain silent about these trades. In exchange, I received $30,000, " McKeever said at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in Manhattan.

Under a plea agreement with the government, the stipulated sentencing guidelines range is 10 months to 16 months. McKeever, 46, had faced up to five years in prison on the conspiracy charge. Sentencing is set for May 1.

McKeever is one of 13 people charged last year in two separate schemes to allegedly use inside information to make improper trades ahead of public announcements of stock recommendations by UBS analysts and ahead of news of pending mergers and acquisitions in which Morgan Stanley was acting as an adviser.

Prosecutors had alleged that McKeever and Childs received about $30,000 in kickbacks for concealing trades made by customers based on the UBS inside information from higher-level management at Assent. Childs is scheduled to go to trial on the charges in April.

McKeever was originally charged last March with conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud and two counts of commercial bribery.

Ten people, including McKeever, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the matter.

As of January 18, 2008, a total of 103 cases with isolates indistinguishable from the outbreak strain had been reported to CDC from 33 states (Figure 2). Information initially was collected from general enteric disease questionnaires administered by state and local health departments. Of the 100 patients for whom age information was available (median age: 7.5 years; range: <1--87><10 href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5703a3.htm?s_cid=mm5703a3_e#fig3">Figure 3). Among the 78 patients for whom clinical information was available, 51 (65%) reported bloody diarrhea, with a median duration of illness of 7 days; 24 (30%) of the 80 patients for whom hospitalization status was known were hospitalized for their illnesses, with a median duration of 4 days. Among the 80 patients questioned about turtle exposure, 47 (59%) reported turtle exposure during the 7 days before illness onset. No deaths were reported.

- i do not handle my turtle because it would eat a finger.this thing has no fear. one of the most vicious creatures on earth, the common snapping turtle.st0ckman's turtle eating fish:

-i have come to the conclusion that this could be a scam. the information does not add up. could it be a cover up for a bank in the hole due to the subprime mess? a "trader" or company going for bust to break even? a scapegoat on the run. will we ever hear from the guy who never got paid to due this? time will tell - st0ckman

GATA's chairman, William J. Murphy III, told WND his group was willing to pay the Wall Street Journal's cost of $264,000 to run the ad "to get the message out that the U.S. enters world markets without public disclosure to prop up the dollar and depress the price of gold."

GATA, a non-profit 501 headquartered in Manchester, Conn., further asserts the federal government strategy to manipulate the price of gold has begun to fail.

"Gold's recent rise toward $900 per ounce shows that the price suppression scheme is faltering," the GATA ad reads. "When it is widely understood how central banks have been suppressing gold, its price may rise to $3,000 or $5,000 an ounce or more."

"The gold reserves of the United States have not been independently audited for half a century," the ad charges.

By Harro ten Wolde AMSTERDAM, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Drug company Echo Pharmaceuticals expects to sell the world's first cannabis pill within five years, targeting a 4 billion euros ($5.85 billion) global market, its chief executive said. The privately-held Dutch company faces competition from Canada's Cannasat which is also developing a pill. In 2005, Canada became the first country in the world to approve a cannabis-based spray produced by Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc as a treatment for multiple sclerosis patients. U.S. regulators granted approval for a clinical trial for GW's under-the-tongue spray called Sativex, but the company said in July that European regulators had requested a further clinical study before approval. Echo said it will start clinical studies and trials of its pill, to be marketed as Namisol, in the first half of 2008. "The global cannabis-based drugs market could be worth 4 billion euros," Echo Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer Geert Woerlee told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. "As an early adopter we could get 20-30 percent market share."

-roughly a 6 billion dollar market for synthetic marijuana. if we legalized medical marijuana and taxed it along with the billions we spend on marijuana law enforcement the money can give us all free health care. once again we are screwed by big pharma and health care companies. this is only one of many plants corporations synthesize for profits thus screwing the people.-st0ckman

great analysis from blogger fred destin on the behind the scenes look at this rogue trader. the st0ckman also feels there is much more than meets the eye here

from mr destin:

I just find this whole story had to believe. So I asked an [unnamed] friend of mine for his advice on this larger than life story, and here are his insights:

Everybody who is anybody in trading or banking is mentioned in Bloomberg. But as late as Wednesday, this was not the case for Jérôme Kerviel. Not one mention anywhere in the system. Even people who left the industry 10 years ago still have their profiles in tact. But not Jérôme Kerviel.

Bloomberg did, however, create a profile for him overnight with his photo, education and a link to their news articles which now do mention his name --but only after Le Figaro did so. Oh, and Le Figaro is citing Bloomberg News as the source of Jérôme Kerviel's name and yet he is not mentioned in any article published in Bloomberg News.

In order to loose €4.9 billion in the futures market one would have to trade at least 10 million futures contracts. The problem is that the daily volume of Eurostoxx futures are only about 1/4 or 1/3 that amount --and that includes all the players, not just one bank. Moreover, if one's positions become more than 10% of the open interest, it sets off alarm bells in the futures exchanges. But apparently not if you are Jerome Kerviel.

SG has extremely sophisticated risk management systems. How did he get around it? SG has noresponse to this but let it be known via the Banque de France that Jerome Kerviel was a "computer genius" but according to the web he went to business school in Lyon. Could he be a computer genius? Yeah why not. But with all the other facts that don't add up, it almost defies credulity.

The margin requirements necessary on the number of futures contracts necessary to produce such a loss would come to about €400 million. Where did he get the money?

SG has decided to prosecute him but on only very limited terms: document fraud and attacks on their internal control systems while not pursuing any monetary damages and saying that he did notattempt to profit from the trades. This will allow them to pursue him in the courts on a very focused case which reduces the risk that they will have to reveal any of their internal accounting.

This has been a good week, with the stimulus package on its way, a 75 bp cut in rates from the Fed, and some hope that bond insurers may be getting some help from insurance regulators. S&P 500 up 2 percent.

Caterpillar's conference call this morning will certainly emphasize recession probabilities. This is not a trivial issue. As traders have noted, because the degree of slowdown is a moving target, future guidance now, bullish or bearish, has less predictive value than usual and investors must keep this in mind.

[HMY10.78-0.96(-8.18%)] both down about 10 percent after announcing they are suspending all South African mining operations after the state power utility asked that all major customers reduce electricity consumption to the minimum possible. The utility claims that the economy has grown too fast to cope with new energy demands and the entire nation must cut power use by 10 to 15 percent. Ouch.

4) Asian economies may be humming along, but there are signs that the IPO business is slowing down. Maoye International, a Chinese department store chain, has shelved its $905 million IPO listing in Hong Kong due to adverse market conditions. The deal was supposed to be priced last night.

Societe Generale said on Thursday it had discovered Û7bn of losses from a rogue trader in European stock futures and big US subprime mortgage writedowns, forcing the French bank into an emergency Û5.5bn share issue. The rogue trader is Jerome Kerviel, a 31-year-old Frenchman who joined SocGen in 2000. He worked for three years in the bank's back office before being promoted two years ago to the Delta One trading desk, handling proprietary deals in futures for European stock indices. He was based in SocGen's Paris headquarters at La Defense. (Sipa Press)

* Jan 18 - The International Herald Tribune runs a report on its Web site saying that Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer has been monitoring the balance sheets of banks such as SocGen. The Bank of France later denies that Noyer ever said this.

* Jan 18 - Later that evening, a compliance officer notices a trade that has breached one of the bank's thresholds. The officer telephones another brokerage, with which SocGen had apparently made the trade, and is told that the firm has no record of any such transaction taking place.

* Jan 19/20 - On Saturday, SocGen senior executives begin investigating suspicious trades which are traced to Kerviel. The trader is hauled in and top management questions him.

* Jan 20 - Kerviel is questioned by the SocGen board.

* Jan 20 - Bouton says he informs the Governor of the Bank of France and the head of France's AMF stock market authority when he learns of the situation.* Jan 20 - Kerviel, who is told by the bank after questioning that it plans to dismiss him, leaves. SocGen fails to hand him over to the police. Bouton later admits, at a news conference, that "perhaps we made a mistake in that respect".

* Jan 21 - As people return to their trading desks after the weekend, SocGen management decides to liquidate Kerviel's positions. Equity markets plunge that day, with many stock indexes suffering their worst one-day close since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

* Jan 21 - SocGen's decision to close down the position in a falling market means the bank makes even more of a loss than it would have done in a more usual market environment. Market traders later wonder if the SocGen rogue trader was partly responsible for the global equity market slump.

* Jan 22 - The U.S. Federal Reserve stuns markets by announcing an emergency interest rate cut. It later says it was unaware of the SocGen rogue trader situation when it made its decision to slash rates by 75 basis points to 3.5 percent.

* Jan 24 0700 GMT - SocGen issues a statement saying it has uncovered a 4.9 billion euro fraud at the bank. It says Bouton and Jean-Pierre Mustier, head of investment banking, tendered their resignations but these were not accepted.

* 1000 GMT - SocGen holds press conference to discuss the fraud. Bouton says the bank does not know the whereabouts of the trader whom it does not identify.

* 1525 GMT - SocGen sources identify the trader as Kerviel. A photo of Kerviel from the SocGen internal website is soon circulating around dealing rooms and fund management houses in Paris.

* 1831 GMT - A source from the U.S. Federal Reserve says U.S. central bank did not know of the rogue trader scandal at SocGen when it made an emergency interest rate cut this week.